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Sunday, May 6, 2012

I’m not sure if anyone stops by here
anymore but if you do, ohai! I have come back after a longish hiatus which
involved moving out of the smalltempletown. I am slightly sadface about this
because the smalltempletown was the best third world writer cred ever.
When people would tell me that they had an MFA, which back in the day I assumed
was some kind of urinary infection, I would say ohai I come from
smalltempletown in South India and even though they never really said
anything about this barring a ‘wtf?’, I knew in my heart that they wished they could
be like me. This is why I never missed an opportunity to put that up in
everyone’s face when they made the mistake of asking for a ‘bio’. Speaking of
bios!

Who is this person? Is it every Indian
person in the internet today? Has it become the equivalent of ‘I love meeting
new people, traveling and hanging out with my friends.”? Why am I being so racist against Writer, big city-dweller, chaidrinker, bike
lover, foodie, wanderer, music aficionado, beer enthusiast, book-lover, serious
sense of humor, human beings? Is it because I am jealous because I lost my smalltempletown bling? Yes.

So anyway, I bid a fond farewell to the
smalltempletown and relocated to Bengaluru where all the cool people live. These
are some impressions, alleged conversations, and things that happened during
that first blush of Bengaluru when it was still making my nose bleed.

-People are not speaking Tamil
here. I don’t understand this. I am that gross species of person that thinks
everyone speaks Tamil or English and I am flabbergasted when they don’t.

- - "Ok wow you actually say ‘yougaiz’
when you talk."

"Yeah."

"It’s really irritating.
Like REALLY."

"Yeah."

"Because like at least on the blog,
you can close it when your lingo gets too irritating, no?"

"Yeah. That’s a drawback
of having to talk to me in person."

"Right. Because it’s REALLY
annoying."

"I know. Sorry yougaiz."

- -
Unrecognizable large green fruit!
Wtf, it’s like I’m in Africa or China or something! SO EXOTIC!!111 ok that’s a watermelon.
Nemmind.

-- Sprite, muscular young man
crossing road in very short shorts. Ok those are clearly not shorts, this publicfellow
has come out in his undrawers. WE CAN TELL WHEN YOU DO THAT YOU KNOW!!! CROSS
THE STREET AGAIN!!!!11

-- ‘And this drinking place is called bacchus?
Like tiny Hindi children people?’

-‘No, like Bah-Kus.’

-‘Then why is it spelled like
tiny HinHinihfsdHindi children
people? Hay, will everyone like me there?

-‘Probably not.’

-‘Oh. Tiny Hindi children people
never seem to like me for some reason.’

- - I had some dodgy pork and
contracted some kind of stomach food poisoning type thing and thought I was
going to die and now whenever I pass the establishment from whence I procured
said dodgy pork I shout ‘I HATE YOU!’ but I don’t think they care at all. Also,
LAZEEZ DOUBLE CHICKEN DOUBLE EGG ROLLS OMG I LUV YOU FOREVER

“Yeah just like you can
proceed over here and you can take a left and just keep going straight for some
time then one Nilgris will come over there, like pretty big and you just don’t
want to miss it because you can head over there and you can get all the
information about that over there.”

“So you don’t know where
it is?”

“Yeah no I don’t know.”

“Ok thanks.”

“Yeah don’t mention.”

- - “Kuzhali? That’s an…unusual
name.”

“Kuzhali? It’s Malayalam
name I think so.”

“Sorry, I just can’t get
that, I’ll call you something else?”

“Your name is what? Ok whatever, I’m
calling you something else.”

Yes please call me
SomethingElse.

-LOL you’re talking to me in
Hindi like I know what you're saying and like I am going to reply in Hindi also LOL!!!111

Like many people who have
come to this coll city, I had trouble finding accommodation and I am going to
talk all about that in the next few posts because this is my blog. It is
also my hope that I will gradually start picking up some Kannada and this
Kannada will gradually infiltrate my polluted “English” and soon I will
suddenly discover I have some kind of Kannadiga ancestry and decide I am not so
much Tamil anymore and actuallytotally Kannadiga. In this way, I hope to
appropriate the cultures of all four Southern states, which is a close second
to coming from a smalltempletown.

There were some other
things I wanted to blog about but frankly, this blog post is already too long
so I will just go through them fastly here.

-The Ashton Kutcher Racist
Ad- Big ups to the righteous peeps who had to use multiple exclamation marks to
tell us Indians to Calm Down!! Because it was Just a Joke!!!! And My Indian
Friend Thought it was Funny so it’s Ok!!!! Also big ups to the righteous peeps
who took the time to remind us that India still follows caste system so who are
we to get offended by Ashton Kutcher in brownface. I for one was
confused for two reasons- one, I thought he was being Mexican/Italian/Spanish
so I was like STOP BEING MEAN TO MEXICAN ITALIAN SPANISH TYPE PEOPLE YOUGAIZ.
Then also we must consider, if he didn’t do brownface et al, how would we know he was Indian? There’s no other way for people to identify Indianness, isn't it? It is.

-Speaking of Brownface! I
saw a bit of a movie called Bhowani Junction, which featured wellknown
brownfaced actors Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger. According to the summary, the
movie is about a half-caste. A half-caste is someone who has partial rights to
be offended by Ashton Kutcher’s racist ad. There was one gentleman in the
movie whose face bore a striking resemblance to a basted turkey, which meant
he was the brown dude, which meant he was an Indian. I was only able to see a
bit of this glorious bit of cinema and that bit featured a limerick type thing
which was about a girl from Sharkie who hooked up with a Darkie and they had
two white kids, two black kids, and two khaki or something like that. Or maybe her name was Sharkie. Could be that also because in the English culture they have strange naming habits. Isn’t it neat how English
people can make darkie rhyme with khaki? That’s so neat. It’s one of the
reasons why they had such colonial powers.

-I saw a trailer for a
movie called The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which apparently is Slumdog
Millionaire but with old, white people. This movie also features brown people
but these people are naturally brown and not brownface so it’s not racist and
ok

I just wanted to remind you that some of us stalk you via RSS feed, so we do not need to haul our butts over to your blog every now and then to see if you have broken your silence. No indeed, we just get it all home delivered in our feed reader of choice. Does that make you feel like a cheap, hastily cooked pizza?

ohai amiga! and this loafer for one is very glad to see you are back! Also glad to hear you be shifting to bengaluru becoz then I can come and ask you for an autograph personally!Warning: landlords in bengaluru are a gigantic pain in the ass.

OmaiigawdGanesha, Kuzhali, you are back! *Kashmiri cartwheels* One is so glad to see you again, humsheera (which BTW is just a fancy word for 'sister' in Urdu, and way cooler than 'behen'.) One is even gladder to #note that you are now Bangalored. (Okay please what is this Bengaluru and all mins like no thanks.) The extra gladness is because I have been known to make periodic visits to the BLR city which gives me great hope that someday I might be able to fall at your feet, holding your books aloft for autograph, and 'Best wishes, K,' type of signings. I will be too much thankful if this were can able to happen. Like, totz. So, on this my third attempt at posting a comment on your magic back-in-the-return post, I hope it gets through.

'Thangod' you're back! (Have you noticed how it is always 'thangod' and not 'thank god'?)so you're in Bangalore now? I used to like that city till it turned into something that it isn't. My cousins live there and they sound like they live in Beverly Hills, not Bengaluru. And for the record, I'm hell bent on calling you Kuzhali and not 'something else'. You're lucky to have such a unique and unusaul name...

@ Space Bar- ohai!! very nice to see you here, if you ever come this side let me know

@ Loafer- ohai amigo! I am glad to be back also :)

@ anonymous- that is very nice of you to say, I missed the internet too yougaiz!!!

@ Aishwarya- aw, happy to see you here maifraand <#. Iyo. I mean <3

@ Sabbah Haji- ohai humsheera, thank you for teaching me a neat word and for saying nice things also. You MUST MUST come and see me when you come to b’lore and we will discuss the room in mountain cottage and all. Love and adoration and all to your face also.

@ Sharanya- ohai! very pleased to be back also :)

@ Battameez- ohai!1 there are many things in Bengaluru I don’t understand but mostly I think it is soveryfine and I like it very much. I am going to ask someone what tarbooz is. Is it something gross? Ok I guess I will find that out after asking.

@ anonymous- hai, I am soglad that you bought my book and all, I hope you will come and say hai here more often :)

@ Emily- glad to be back :)

@ Sharanya- !!! :) :)

@ Lost and Found- ohai! I drove through Beverly Hills once when I was very young! It didn’t look like Bengaluru at all. Also, am just mentioning that because I want peeps to know I drove through Beverly Hills once, thus making up for loss of smalltempletown bling. Also thank you for not calling me somethingelse

@ s(m)al- you come off ra, we will drink together. And possibly lose our lunch in the process.

@ shruthi- ohai :) universewilling, I hope to blog every other week. Bengaluru is nice you come off ra

@ once known as ‘marry me’- ohai fraand! My respectful pranaams to you and your family members also. Heart is currently torn about who to support in IPL. Part of me is saying have respect for newcountryland and part of me is saying have respect for oldcountryland so I am currently having no respect for anyone and supporting the nonIPL team called Chidambaram ChooChooTrains. Also thanks for the best gif, will credit you when I use it in the coming future

@ Raji Chockaiyan- thangsya, am glad to be back also :)

@ vidya sury- ohai! I have been advised by mostillustrious peepal not to say where I live on the internet because I got rape comment on here once and now they’re like, see??? That’s what happens when you’re not a dude and you talk on the internet, which makes no sense but makes a lot of sense also. Please don’t mistake, ah?

@ anonymous- ohai! Thanks for the tips, I learned the hard way about the sambar but feel like I will get used to this kind of sambar also. This is sambar unity in the diversity.

@ Pallavi Rao- ohai!!! Thank you for writing such a wonderful review of my little book, I am mostproud to link to it. I hope we run into each other as well. Not literally of course. Because that would hurt.

@ A- ohai! No readings planned right now. I read something to someone in my kitchen recently but I don’t think that’s what you meant and that was unplanned also.

aiyoo, i also want to comment. Especially when you write one post after a bluemoon and all. So, please accept my sincere heartfelt comment from the bottom of my heart Sincerely,Faithfully,Sachita.Ps: I am also ' love your blog but cant understand your book too well" person.

About Me

Kuzhali Manickavel is the author of the short story collections 'Insects Are Just like You and Me except Some of Them Have Wings' and 'Things We Found During the Autopsy', both available from Blaft Publications. She also has an email id and it goes like kuzhali (dot) ehm (at) gmail (dot) com